Tried With Fire

Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South, Adrienne Berard, Beacon Press, 2016. Water Tossing Boulders is the true story of the Lum family's fight to have their children admitted to the whites-only public school in Rosedale, Mississippi. This unfolded in 1924-1927 during the years of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act , Jim Crow laws, and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act . Jeu Gong and Katherine Lum were immigrants and part of the wave of Chinese laborers that came to this country to supply the loss of slave labor after the end of the Civil War. A large number of these laborers were denied entry or reentry with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the only law to-date that prohibited people from entering the US based on national origin. Laws were also stricter regarding the Chinese already here, but the Lums were able to settle in the deep South and open a small grocery store. The children, who were Americans by ...

When I started delving into the history of Asian American immigration, I uncovered stories and facts that I was never taught in school. One of those facts was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act , a racist government policy that troubles me. It has left me skeptical about the rosy picture of the past that was painted for me through school texts and biographies. Thus I've been reading more history in search of the truth. Now I've learned something else. Water Tossing Boulders is the story of the Lum family, a Chinese Mississippi Delta family who challenged the state's school segregation laws when their daughters were forbidden to attend the whites-only public school. Their case went to the Supreme Court in 1927 , 25 years before Brown v. Board of Education , a landmark case worth reading about . Yet the Lum's story was omitted from history books. When asked the reason why, a descendent said, "Because we lost" to a unanimous 9-0 vote. What would it have been ...

When I read Hidden Figures , it was eye-opening in more ways than one. In addition to the story of the three main characters, I received a brief lesson in civil rights history. During World War II, Virginia was in the bottom 25% of teacher's salaries. Black teachers earned half that amount. 1  Even though Supreme Court ruled in 1936 against racial discrimination in graduate admissions, the Commonwealth still found a way to maintain segregation. A voucher program was created to subsidize graduate tuition for black students in any state  but  Virginia. This program was in place until 1950. 2  These facts were asides within the larger narrative, but they still shocked me. As a child of immigrants, I know the value and power of education. It enabled my family to make a fresh start in a foreign land that is now our home. I've never been denied access to education because of my ethnicity or gender. But I've been sheltered in that regard. There are places in the wo...